BAD news for Tottenham Hotspur fans in Singapore.

The Premiership team has cancelled its pre-season friendly tour to Singapore and Vietnam next month.

Spurs were tentatively pencilled in for a friendly with a Singapore Selection side on 30 May at the National Stadium as part of their two-stop tour to the region, which includes a stopover at Hanoi.

But the trip has been called off because the players have to report to their respective countries for international friendlies following the end of the Premiership season on 24 May.

Busy schedule

'We were very close to securing a visit from Tottenham Hotspur to Vietnam and Singapore, but due to the very busy football schedule, the trip is no longer possible,' former national footballer R Sasikumar, who is the managing director of event organisers The Red Card, said in a press release yesterday.

'The Premier League season continues until almost the end of May and then the majority of their players will be playing games for their national teams immediately after, so it was always going to be difficult to arrange a two-match tour that would work around the football calendar.

'We will continue to build on the relationship with Tottenham Hotspur in the hope that we will be able to create another opportunity for Spurs to visit the region on another occasion.'

Spurs would have been the first Premiership team to visit Singapore since Manchester United and Liverpool last played here in 2001.

Spurs' executive director Paul Barber expressed his regret at the cancellation of the trip, but did not rule out the possibility of visiting Singapore in the future.

'International tours are very difficult to arrange and unfortunately on this occasion the very busy schedule at the end of May will prevent us from visiting the region at this time,' he said in the release.

'We are very excited by the passion and interest for Tottenham Hotspur in the Asia Pacific region, and it is certainly somewhere we would like to visit if given the opportunity in the near future.'

Spurs may not be coming after all, but fans of the English Premiership can still look forward to Liverpool's visit to Singapore in July.

So far, the Merseyside club has not made any formal announcement of its pre-season friendly tour, but Liverpool's commercial director, Ian Ayre, told The New Paper last month that the trip is on.